Douglas Murray

Douglas Murray is a bestselling author and award-winning journalist based in London. He has written for numerous publications including the Telegraph, Spectator, Wall Street Journal and Sunday Times. He is a columnist for Standpoint magazine and the Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, a Westminster think-tank which studies radicalisation and extremism in Britain.

One of the most coveted prizes in British academia is a fellowship of All Souls College, Oxford. This brings with it a salary of £14,783 a year. Many lecturers and academics don't receive much more than that. Others earn a good deal less. But, as one newspaper reports today, there are people in the university world who seem to clean up very nicely indeed.

Take Malcolm Grant for instance, Provost of University College London (UCL). It transpires that Grant's salary for the year 2008-2009 was the highest in the country. Grant trousered a tidy £376,190 in that year alone.

What is it, one wonders, that makes him worth that sum? What exactly is it that earns him a salary more than twice that of the British Prime Minister? Indeed what is it that makes Provost Grant worth more than 25 fellows of All Souls?

Is it his logic? His grasp of issues? The soundness of his judgment?

Alas, apparently not. A single example might suffice. In the last year Grant has been… Read More

If you spend any time looking into Islamic radicalism, you do sometimes wonder if you can be shocked any more. For me this video at least reminded me that I can be.

It is a video from a recent talk by the American author David Horowitz at University of California San Diego.If any of you thought that it is only the UK that has been stupid enough to allow radical Islamists to thrive on our campuses, think again.

I really do urge you to watch till the end to understand quite why it is so shocking. When Horowitz quotes the leader of Hezbollah saying that all the Jews going to Israel will save Hezbollah going round the globe and hunting them down one by one, you may guess what the girl is going to say. But I promise your breath will be taken away by the way she says it.

Commentators are asking what the new coalition means for the Right wing of the Tory party. But a more pertinent question seems to me, now that the Liberal Democrats are in the cabinet: what will happen to the crazy wing of the Lib Dem party? Not just Jenny Tonge, the peer who wants an inquiry into allegations of Jewish organ-harvesting, but all the other chancers, weirdos and conspiracy theorists in the parliamentary party.

In the small hours, when Nick Clegg had finished selling them his tawdry deal, Liberal Democrat MPs started to spill out onto the streets to speak to the waiting press. And, bleary-eyed though I was, I could see coming out a truly fascinating pair, sent to remind us of who now helps govern us, thanks to the poll triumph of David "change to win" Cameron.

First was Simon ("Thanks be to Allah") Hughes. Though on this occasion, seeing as he was on Sky television rather than… Read More

There have been reports swilling around the media that the Conservative party, if it enters into a deal with the Lib Dems, will bring back "Right-wingers Michael Howard, Iain Duncan Smith and David Davis". I'm not sure Davis is Right wing. And I don't see what's especially Right-wing about IDS, either.

But I smell Labour black ops in here. Michael Howard left Parliament at this election. And there is certainly no need or reason to bring him back. This is a Left-wing dog-whistle. The Labour party want to remind the Lib Dems and the country as a whole of one of the most widely disliked Conservative politicians of recent memory. And perhaps they also know that he is another case of a man who is not as nice as he looks.

So, whatever happens in the next couple of days, David "change to win" Cameron isn't going to be in Downing Street leading a majority government. But can he eventually achieve that?

It's quite simple, really.

If he had any political sense, he would advise Nick Clegg to get lost (and I am putting that politely). He would suggest that Clegg busily woo Gordon Brown and help him remain in Downing Street at the head of a snug Labour-Lib Dem pact.

Dave would sit back and watch as the degraded coalition made the cuts needed to sort out the British economy, stabilise the situation – and take the blame for it. Then he could watch as the coalition fell apart. When that happened, the Conservative Party would force an election. At which point they would finally provide a real alternative.

A truly dreadful night for everyone. But firstly – how delicious, on waking, to see Nick Clegg getting a taste of humble pie. I thought I was dreaming. Clegg is a system politician through and through who couldn't believe his luck that over the past couple of weeks the British public appeared to be falling for his "great outsider" line. What a tremendous demonstration of this nation's thoughtfulness that they didn't fall for it in the end.

Labour have obviously had some bad losses, but it is interesting how some of their more principled MPs, like the great Gisela Stuart, have hung on. Is there any chance of other MPs taking a lesson from this? Perhaps principles in politics aren't so unrewarding after all? The increase of votes to the great Douglas Carswell also suggests that the public don't feel entirely opposed to politicians who behave well with their money and honour their vote.

This election hasn't been short of bitter laughs. But last night I had perhaps my final one of the campaign.

Visiting a friend in the terribly smart new constituency of Kensington (formerly Kensington and Chelsea) I saw the incumbent local Conservative party candidate's leaflet.

Alongside the Conservative party's naked Obama-wannabe slogan 'Vote for Change' was the photograph and name of… Sir Malcolm Rifkind.

Now I have a degree of respect for Sir Malcolm Rifkind and admire a number of things he has done in his career. But a vote for Rifkind as a vote for change? Really? Vote for change by voting for the man who was Defence Secretary when I was still at school?

Benedict Brogan mentions here the disgustingly divisive and opportunistic leaflet circulated by the Conservatives in Blackburn. The Tory candidate there is the not especially Muslim-sounding Michael Law-Riding.

The leaflet claims: “We cannot be deceived by [the Labour government's] hollow claims. We have in front of us a whole saga of atrocities committed in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Palestine and as if this was not enough, the Labour government allowed the Israeli government to create havoc in Lebanon and Gaza in Palestine"

Gosh – it certainly sounds like these Tories expect a lot of the Labour government. I didn't know that it was in Gordon Brown's power to "allow" the Israeli government to do anything.

The pamphlet goes on to accuse Jack Straw, the MP for Blackburn, of insulting “our [sic] religion and culture and … our sisters and mothers.”

Quite a claim. Apparently this is because Jack Straw once asked a Muslim woman to show her face… Read More

I've just come across something which reveals even more than Brown's "bigot" remark the contempt in which the Labour elite hold the people of this country.

The Harrow Times relates the story of a debate last week between the four candidates for the seat of Harrow East: Tony McNulty for Labour, a Tory, a Lib Dem and a UKIP candidate.

Now as it happens, I know the UKIP candidate a little. His name is Abhijit Pandya. He is a fellow in law at the LSE. As well as being academically distinguished, he is hugely intelligent and likeable. He is also admirably unafraid of tackling difficult issues. That is, he is exactly the sort of person who would make the House of Commons a better place.

According to the local paper, during the Harrow debate Abhijit said that in this country British culture should be put first. He also said that the policy of multiculturalism "is a bad thing" because of the segregation it causes.

For this McNulty declared that Abhijit had "forgotten his roots"…. Read More

Obviously nobody does car-crash, hide-behind-your-hands-it's-so-embarrassingly-awful-you-feel-like-you're-responsible TV like Gordon Brown. But even by his standards the "bigot" comment and its fallout raises the bar of what the public can be tormented with.

The comment will stick and the reason is this.

Gillian, as Brown is now calling the lady he insulted, should be just the sort of person Brown went into politics to defend: a working-class woman. To my mind, his dismissal of her concerns about immigration as being the expressions of a bigot seems roughly analogous to:

Nick Clegg getting into a car after meeting an ageing 1960s pony-tailed peacenik Lib Dem in Devon and, once inside, being recorded saying: "God, what a loser that old hippy was."

Or David Cameron meeting a hard-working aspiring small businessman somewhere in the Midlands and saying, once inside his Jaguar: "What a social-climbing, pushy little try-hard."

In other words, insulting Gillian Duffy should hit Labour supporters to the core. Here is what they thought the party stood… Read More